On Peace Talks and PR

Recently I've been reading a lot of articles about the need for the US government, and President Obama in particular, to reach out to Israelis. These articles present a valid point. Israelis do not trust Obama, on the whole, and his lack of major policy speeches or overt gestures towards Israelis gives them no reason to stand against Netanyahu, who has no genuine interest in peace and is only hoping on keeping Israeli society enraged enough to maintain his office.

There was a great editorial in the New York Times by the editor of Haaretz (the main liberal paper in Israel) on the need for an overture from Obama towards the Israeli people.

Similarly, an old friend from Davidson posted an article on facebook that was a great read. The article is from the crown prince of Bahrain and focuses on the need for genuine PR efforts in the Middle East. This is a three part issue. First is his explicit acknowledgement that the Arab political establishment benefits from the continued failure of any sort of negotiations between Israel and Palestine. These leaders enjoy using the suffering of Palestinians as a lightening rod issue, and have no cause to abate this suffering. The other two parts involve the need for Israeli and Arab outreach. Israelis need to make a strong and genuine effort to demonstrate their desire for peace to the Arab world. This will require an activist PR movement--speeches, events, photo ops, etc. that show Israelis demanding peace. The Arab world must also produce their own PR initiative, one to convince Israelis that peace is possible, that the entire Arab world does not want their destruction. This requires both an effort within Israel and a cessation to the use of anti-Israel rhetoric within countries as a demogague's unifying cry.

Then I saw another post to Facebook with a link to this article. The article is about the use of the term "Free Gaza" and why it is a poor activist term as it separates the suffering of Gazans from those of Palestinians in the West Bank. And the article is so full of bias it is uncomfortable reading. The main point of the article is that Israel is responsible for splitting the West Bank and Gaza, and activists should not reinforce the split, even through the use of language. And while Israel certainly benefits from the rift between Gaza and the West Bank, Israel did not create the rift, and is not the one that maintains it. The reason this logic is particularly unsettling for me is that my friend is an intelligent, critical activist, and I feel that such a an absence of understanding of the Palestinian political system is, well, bizarre.

Of course, this is a highly emotional issue for many people, and so logic often falls to the wayside (for both Israelis and Palestinians and for the supporters for each side). But the two greatest threats to the Palestinian people are Fatah and Hamas. The Palestinian political leadership feeds on the strife. And Israel is able to ignore the need for peace when there is such failure of leadership. How can they be expected to negotiate with Palestinian leadership that can't even decide who should be present at the table? If Palestinians were allowed to elect a unified democratic government, Israel would have to address this government as the representative of the people. Fatah and Hamas, particularly Hamas, are not representative governments, they're thuggish clans.

The same friend posted an article from Haaretz on the upsurge in young Israelis requesting combat units with a comment demanding sanctions on Israel. Sanctions won't fix the problem. And it's not just a problem, it's also a symptom of the incredible fear and frustration young Israelis feel after the latest military campaign in Lebanon and Operation Cast Lead. Israel didn't come out with a definitive victory, and young Israelis in particular are concerned about the how any drop in perceived military strength could lead to further attacks.

Obviously, for my friend and I this will be an agree to disagree situation. I am wildy supportive of efforts towards peace, and think the Israeli government did irreperable damage to Gaza, but I'm not willing to diefy or to demonize either side.

Home

So over a month after my last blog post, I've finally made it home. I promise I will fill in the blog with all of the exciting things since Shavuot. I have 5 weeks home before heading off to Italy, so that's plenty of time for catch up.

Love you all! Watch this space!